Less Than the Dust

A brown-faced Mary Pickford stretches her acting chops by playing an Indian child instead of an American one in this rather pointless silent. There are some mildly amusing scenes early on - particularly when Pickford falls into a sacred pool - but the plot is so wafer-thin that you have to wonder why they bothered.

Mary Pickford is a middle-caste Indian girl -- her father is a swordsmith. When British army officer David Powell is kind to her, she develops a yen for him. However, the locals rise up and matters grow very complicated.

Pickford is charming as a hard-nosed young woman who drives a hard bargain and isn't above filching food or a bolt of cloth. Powell is there to play the conventional upright love interest and certainly does so adequately. He was an accomplished actor, having come out of Beerbohm-Tree's company. His death at 41 in 1926 is a shame.

Mostly, though, this movie is another chance for Little Mary to play an exotic creature in an exotic land, as her vehicles in this period would have her, and she does so very nicely. The India in this movie directed by John Emerson is a place of caste and hatred and temples and sacred pools and cows, all of which are carefully explained in the titles. Most of the comic bits occur in the final third in the movie, when she has wound up in England.

What survives is a nice movie, although the last reel was missing from the print I saw. Rumor claims there is a complete 35 mm. Print. It is undoubtedly on the Pickford Foundation's To Do list, although I expect that with the casual racism and hatred between Hindu and Muslim these days, it's nowhere near the top. Still, someday.

Mary does her best to carry a thin plot by being as endearing as possible, so we get generous helpings of feisty, mischievous and cute. To pass more credibly for Indian (before the unsurprising revelation that she's actually English), they could at least have had her in dark hair, but evidently that would have been too much of a departure from the Little Mary Formula. However, since none of the other 'natives' are played by South Asians, her obvious lack of Indian-ness is not as glaring as it could be.

It doesn't make much sense for the supposed daughter of a respectable artisan to behave like a penniless street urchin. Doesn't Papa make a decent living? Or doesn't he know about her hoydenish pilferings and other misadventures? A decent Hindu daughter wouldn't be running wild racking up bad karma and mixing with unclean (if better washed) English people. But Mary makes such an adorable hoyden that all must be forgiven, right?

There's some fun after she goes to England, with a suit of armor mistaken for an idol and given offerings of flowers. Thankfully her ignorance of Western table manners doesn't deteriorate into slapstick, and her dismay at discovering cooked sacred cow on the table --and on her own plate!-- is handled with taste and restraint. But excuse me, when retiring to bed in the manor house she finds it too warm?? English houses are notoriously cool, but Radha, who comes from a warm climate, is sweltering indoors and wants to sleep outside on the grass. Could there be an unusually hot summer? Hmm.

Then there's the British boyfriend. They're supposed to end up as an item, wedding bells and all, once he learns that she's not really a swarthy Indian. Okay. So it even turns out that his wealthy uncle (different surname, so Townsend's mother would be Uncle's sister, right?) was the father of Radha's real father (who was disowned for his dissolute ways). With her grandfather as his uncle, that makes Townsend a sort of uncle to Radha, since Townsend's mother would be Radha's great aunt. That's a pretty close relative! Well, you know, this thing works best if you don't expect it to make sense. Just enjoy the Mary-ment and don't worry over logic.